[Article]Eternal Europe: Oathbreaking in Prague

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Well, it's Vintage but I felt that those of you who enjoy my stuff should at least know that there's a second article this week anyway.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29053_Oathbreaking-In-Prague.html

Enjoy :)

[Higgs]

Nice article again.

Oath looks to be in a really good position from the outside with the abundance of creature decks and Oath being good against shops as well. However I find the approach from the last BoM champion to be more sensible in terms of being a traditional blue key-vault deck pre-board and turning into an Oath deck post board as opposed to remaining an Oath deck all the way through and having to remove your suboptimal oath support cards (as you've suggested at the end of your article). Oath is very good against a range of decks but sometimes you just don't want all the chaff for building around Oath so why not have it in your SB just as a tranformational piece for when you need it? Anyways that's my opinion about Oath but the success of control Grisel-Oath lists speak for themselves.

[Tammit67]

I wish Oath was less popular, honestly. The mirror is kind of stupid and not very enjoyable.

The oath mirror is so incredibly boring if both players don't fall for obvious blowouts (Like casting oath without orchard control or Jace with no backup into an opposing drain).

I've been toying with the idea of something like Treetop village for the mirror, although sideboard slots are at such a premium. Issues with the current wincons in the mirror.


Vault key gets hit by decay, misstep, nature's claim, force of will so it is difficult to rely on. Only having 1 copy of each and often no tinker means tutoring for it somehow.
Oath is really fickle. Sometimes you have orchard advantage and would be able to activate, but the opponent kills the oath and you give them tokens to kill you with. Sometimes you set it up and they have orchard advantage thanks to more orchards or time walk.
Jace is solid but suffers from being a 4 drop against some number of drains, forces, flusters, and possibly mindbreak traps.


Some sort of manland plan would bypass the removal and counters I'm seeing, beat over enemy tokens, and prevent an active Jace from using ultimate all the while being incredibly janky and possibly relevant in other control mirrors.

[vennie]

The oath mirror is so incredibly boring if both players don't fall for obvious blowouts (Like casting oath without orchard control or Jace with no backup into an opposing drain).

I've been toying with the idea of something like Treetop village for the mirror, although sideboard slots are at such a premium. Issues with the current wincons in the mirror.


Vault key gets hit by decay, misstep, nature's claim, force of will so it is difficult to rely on. Only having 1 copy of each and often no tinker means tutoring for it somehow.
Oath is really fickle. Sometimes you have orchard advantage and would be able to activate, but the opponent kills the oath and you give them tokens to kill you with. Sometimes you set it up and they have orchard advantage thanks to more orchards or time walk.
Jace is solid but suffers from being a 4 drop against some number of drains, forces, flusters, and possibly mindbreak traps.


Some sort of manland plan would bypass the removal and counters I'm seeing, beat over enemy tokens, and prevent an active Jace from using ultimate all the while being incredibly janky and possibly relevant in other control mirrors.

Would Creeping tarpit not be better than treetop village?

[Lemnear]

Would Creeping tarpit not be better than treetop village?

Show and Tell would also work to present another angle

[Tammit67]

Would Creeping tarpit not be better than treetop village?
The issue is that tarpit requires you to tap lower so that you opponent has more of a window to resolve something devastating. Might not be an issue if you have the right free countermagic, but you probably can't drain them without giving them a token and their ability to time vault you is probably easier since you won't have a lot of mana up for decay/claim and the ensuing counterwar


Show and Tell would also work to present another angle

Yeah, people usually have 1 main, 1 board locally. It is still reasonable to sneak it under drain early on. I really don't want to be the dude that taps out to drop griselbrand while my opponent also drops one with mana up. Seems like I'll lose out next turn with the mana deficit. Small chance of that scenario though

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Nice article again.

Oath looks to be in a really good position from the outside with the abundance of creature decks and Oath being good against shops as well. However I find the approach from the last BoM champion to be more sensible in terms of being a traditional blue key-vault deck pre-board and turning into an Oath deck post board as opposed to remaining an Oath deck all the way through and having to remove your suboptimal oath support cards (as you've suggested at the end of your article). Oath is very good against a range of decks but sometimes you just don't want all the chaff for building around Oath so why not have it in your SB just as a tranformational piece for when you need it? Anyways that's my opinion about Oath but the success of control Grisel-Oath lists speak for themselves.

You might be right that the Oath transform board is the way to approach things but there are so many creatures in Vintage right now that you might as well have access to the Oath plan MD already. It isn't like you can't use the SB slots that you'd usually use on the transformation for some sweet like turning into that Tezz list postboard when Oath is bad.

@'Nilla Pac: So the general idea behind the Gush build seems reasonable to you (going down on Orchards to get Gush to work)?

@Tammit67/Vennie: I thought about manlands, too, especially for the no Gush list. It's hard to make room for non-blue sources, though. Maybe as SB cards that are also decent against workshop just because they allow you to run more mana sources?
However, I didn't consider Tar Pit for some reason. The more I think about it, the better it sounds in spite of the high activation cost for two reasons. In spite of being a tapland, it is at least a solid mana source (blue) on its own. It also happens to blank Jace - one of the stronger threats to resolve when I'm tapping low - quite well (they either plus or it dies).

@Lemnear: S&T was rather terrible for me in Prague. I wouldn't cut the first one because it seems like a very high potential tutor target but it's so clunky in a list like the ones I presented that I'd be loath to have more than one by now.


Over all, thanks everybody, happy to get some interesting input!

[vennie]

You might be right that the Oath transform board is the way to approach things but there are so many creatures in Vintage right now that you might as well have access to the Oath plan MD already. It isn't like you can't use the SB slots that you'd usually use on the transformation for some sweet like turning into that Tezz list postboard when Oath is bad.

@'Nilla Pac: So the general idea behind the Gush build seems reasonable to you (going down on Orchards to get Gush to work)?

@Tammit67/Vennie: I thought about manlands, too, especially for the no Gush list. It's hard to make room for non-blue sources, though. Maybe as SB cards that are also decent against workshop just because they allow you to run more mana sources?
However, I didn't consider Tar Pit for some reason. The more I think about it, the better it sounds in spite of the high activation cost for two reasons. In spite of being a tapland, it is at least a solid mana source (blue) on its own. It also happens to blank Jace - one of the stronger threats to resolve when I'm tapping low - quite well (they either plus or it dies).

@Lemnear: S&T was rather terrible for me in Prague. I wouldn't cut the first one because it seems like a very high potential tutor target but it's so clunky in a list like the ones I presented that I'd be loath to have more than one by now.


Over all, thanks everybody, happy to get some interesting input!

One thing I have noticed is that if you go ahead and have 3/4 show and tells postboard its often a liability to have only two griselbrand.
I have in the past added an extra griselbrand in my sb for tose G2/3's.